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Toronto city council has done well to overhaul taxi industry rules. Drivers stand to benefit as well as riders, with all cabs to be wheelchair-accessible.

New rules will make all Toronto taxis wheelchair-accessible within 10 years. (Lucas Oleniuk / Toronto Star)

Thu., Feb. 20, 2014

It won’t be evident right away, but a welcome overhaul of Toronto’s taxi industry should result in a wheelchair accessible, better-maintained, entirely owner-operated fleet. And that’s worth celebrating, especially if advocates of reform are right and the bulk of increased costs are covered by ousting industry middlemen.

With 4,849 licensed cabs operating in Toronto, making about 65,000 trips every day, these changes have the potential to affect a great many people. But the biggest winners are disabled riders and the 1,300 Toronto’s cab drivers who hold an Ambassador taxi licence.

Right now, only about 3.5 per cent of Toronto’s taxis are fully accessible, meaning a person can ride without having to transfer out of their wheelchair. And most of those cabs are contracted to provide Wheel-Trans service for the transit system. That makes it almost impossible for a tourist in a wheelchair, for example, to hail an accessible cab in Toronto. This needs to change.

Long-awaited reforms, approved by city council Wednesday, require all taxi cabs — 100 per cent — to be wheelchair accessible within 10 years. And over the same period, a two-tier system that severely limits the value of an Ambassador licence is to be axed.

Holders of such a licence, or plate, must currently drive full-time; they can’t hire other drivers and can’t lease, transfer, sell or rent their cab. In contrast, holders of Standard cab licences don’t need to drive at all. Many hold several plates and rent licensed taxis to a majority of Toronto’s cabbies through various middlemen. If these owners tired of their investment, a Standard plate could be sold for up to $345,000.

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Adopting a well-researched staff recommendation, council voted to ditch the city’s Ambassador and Standard plates and replace them with a single new Toronto Taxicab Licence. When that’s fully phased in, by 2024, the era of absentee taxi plate-holders will finally end.

All holders of the new taxi licence are required to drive for at least 167 hours a month; they can rent remaining hours to other drivers or fleet operators, and have the right to sell their cab. Only one such licence is allowed per person, and his or her taxi must be wheelchair-accessible.

Current holders of a Standard taxi licence are understandably unhappy. The value of these plates should significantly drop. And there won’t be much need for assorted middlemen that play a big role in the industry now.

On the other hand, riders stand to benefit. There’s solid evidence that owner-operated taxis deliver better service — with cleaner vehicles and fewer mechanical problems on inspection.

Pride comes with ownership, and so does an increased sense of responsibility. It simply makes sense to issue licences for operating taxis to people who actually drive the cars, not to some arm’s-length investor. Other changes in the industry overhaul include:

Allowing drivers to charge $25 to passengers who soil their cab — a provision popularly known as a “vomit fee.”

Permitting cabbies to require $25 from riders as advance payment before starting on a trip.

Drafting a new “taxi cab bill of rights,” covering drivers and passengers.

New licensing provisions are to start as early as July, when Ambassador plate-holders will be allowed to start exchanging their old, restrictive permit for a new Toronto Taxicab Licence. But it makes sense to go slow and phase in the full extent of this reform over a decade. That should give people holding lucrative Standard plates a chance to adapt. And, as vehicles wear out, they can gradually be replaced with wheelchair-accessible models.

Toronto’s taxi industry was in need a major tune-up and city councillors should be commended for rolling up their sleeves and reaching a decision without further dithering. A lot of cab drivers — and riders — will be better off for it.

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